Using 3D Body Scanning to Solve the Issue of Poor Fit

The apparel, fashion and footwear industry is a fast paced environment, where those hungry for innovation thrive. New product lines boast new trends, new technology, new standards. Yet in this everchanging landscape, one thing has remained a consistent cause for concern in recent years – fit…..

Way back when, our predecessors set these standards based on the standard fit of their nation. But with globalisation and the overall change in shapes and sizes, the “standard consumer” has changed. This has resulted in brands being plagued with a higher than desirable rate of return on products, and overall reduced customer satisfaction.

It’s no surprise then that the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) just recently updated its series of standards to provide a universal set of size markings for clothing manufacturers around the world to help improve fit.

All the while 3D technology has been helping solve many an apparel conundrum; from reducing waste to speeding up development timelines. So after your initial overall 3D tech rollout, a natural progression is extending its functionality across the product development cycle into the area of fit.

By investing in body scanning hardware technology and integrating that within your existing 3D software platform, you can easily scan a number of your consumers within each size group using this information to update your fit avatars. With these installed within your 3D software, the process of digitally designing new lines becomes much more efficient, agile and flexible.

One such example is Columbia Sportswear. Fresh out of their 3D discovery and planning journey, Columbia’s geared up, four-phase implementation began in August 2016. They reached their phase one goal of integrating ~20% of their entire product lines with 3D by December 2016, and now are aggressively looking forward to their phase two target of ~50%., which has evolved to include the integration of Human Solutions body scanning hardware into their existing Browzwear software.

The Columbia team are a perfect example of how to get the most out of a 3D investment, and through aligning 3D software and 3D hardware, have solved a major brand issue.

Columbia Sportswear will be speaking at PI Apparel New York on 22nd and 23rd June, on ‘Converging 3D and Body Scanning Technologies for more Accurate Fit Prototypes and Faster Sample Speeds’. See the full program here.